Sunday, February 21, 2010

Traditional Sung Mass today at SS Gregory & Augustine's

Fr John Saward continues to celebrate his regular 10.30 am Sunday Mass in the usus antiquior from time to time. The last one was on Remebrance Sunday; one took place today; the next one will be the 4th Sunday After Easter, 25th April. All of these are Sung Masses.

For the first time the Parish Choir was joined by five members of the Schola Abelis - one of whom is a member of the parish choir as well - to help with the chants. We sang the enormously long tract to a Psalm-tone (does anyone sing it in full?), and the Schola Abelis singers did the Graduale on their own, but the other chant propers, Mass XVIII, and Credo III, were done with all the singers. And it was a pretty good result.These Masses are an interesting experiment, presenting the Traditional Mass to a congregation who are mainly there simply because they always go to the 10.30am Mass. They seemed to enter into the spirit of it.